Rookie of the Year Is a Two-Horse Race in the American League

The regular season wraps up this weekend, and the race for the American League Rookie of the Year Award has narrowed to Michael Fulmer, a starting pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, and Gary Sanchez, the slugging catcher for the Yankees. Solid arguments can be made for either player, but with just a little more time, the choice might have been far easier to make.

A major distinction for Fulmer, who has faded somewhat after a strong start to the season, appeared to slip away on Wednesday night: A 45-minute rain delay may have cost him the American League title for earned run average.

Fulmer came into the game with a 2.95 E.R.A., and he tried to keep pitching in the third inning after the delay. However, he was out of sync and got only one more out, allowing three earned runs over all in three and a third innings. Stuck at 159 innings for the season, he is three short of qualifying for the E.R.A. title, a rare feat for a rookie and one that might have been enough to get voters to ignore Sanchez’s stunning two-month run.

There is still a chance that the Tigers could use Fulmer out of the bullpen this weekend to get the three innings he needs, but his poor outing on Wednesday pushed up his E.R.A. to 3.057, which is barely ahead of Aaron Sanchez (3.065), Masahiro Tanaka (3.065) and Justin Verlander (3.099). Even if Fulmer was given the opportunity, the title would hardly be a sure thing.

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Gary Sanchez has hit 20 home runs since joining the Yankees in August.CreditMichael Dwyer/Associated Press

Sanchez has forced his way into the conversation despite becoming a regular in the Yankees’ lineup only on Aug. 3 and hitting his first home run on Aug. 10. Still, through 50 games, he hit .311 with a .689 slugging percentage. Along the way, he tied Wally Berger’s record for fewest career games to hit 20 home runs — 51, a mark that had stood since 1930.

Sanchez has been on such a tear that his teammates openly joke about how high their expectations for him have reached.

“Everybody on the team calls home run when he steps up there,” Tyler Austin, another young Yankees hitter, told reporters after Sanchez hit his 20th on Tuesday.

On top of his outstanding statistics, Sanchez seemed to single-handedly reignite the Yankees’ season. In doing what he did, he also summoned up memories of the rookie season of Willie McCovey, who set the National League on fire when the San Francisco Giants called him up in 1959.

McCovey arrived on July 30 and proceeded to hit .354 with a .656 slugging percentage and 13 home runs in 52 games, settling into the heart of the order on a team that already had Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda. He was such a sensation that Cepeda, who had won the Rookie of the Year Award the previous season, was forced to change positions to accommodate him.

The small number of games McCovey played that season did not bother voters, who gave him all 24 votes in the rookie-of-the-year balloting.

Upon the news of McCovey’s award, John Drebinger of The New York Times wrote an assessment of the young player that easily could have been about Sanchez. It read: “The 21-year-old McCovey hit the Giants with a fearful impact on July 30, sparked new life into them and, even though they skidded again at the end, the loss of the pennant scarcely could be attributed to Willie. Without him, they never would have come that close.”

Unlike Sanchez, McCovey’s candidacy was aided by a lack of other qualified competitors, a situation aggravated by the fact that under the rules at the time, Vada Pinson of the Cincinnati Reds had played too much in 1958 to be considered for the Rookie of the Year Award in 1959.

Fulmer provides a much better foil for Sanchez than any McCovey had to deal with. He had already started 16 games for the Tigers when Sanchez’s run began in August, and he has been Detroit’s second-best starter for nearly the entire season. One argument against him: Some of his secondary statistics, including Fielding Independent Pitching, suggest that he has not pitched quite as well as his E.R.A. indicates.

There are no specific criteria for the voters to consider, other than player eligibility. In McCovey’s case, there were rumors that his strong season in the minors (he hit .372 with 29 home runs in 95 games for Class AAA Phoenix) played into his winning the award. So the voters would be free to consider the fact that Fulmer has been fading while Sanchez would most likely have been capable of far more than he was given the chance to provide.

It would be hard to blame voters who choose Fulmer, but Sanchez’s season is the type that will be talked about for decades, making him an unusual but probably correct pick for the award.

No matter which of them wins, they will both most likely have a more prosperous off-season than McCovey did in 1959. By the time the award was announced in mid-November, the big first baseman had been working at a car dealership for a month, but news reports indicated he had yet to sell a car. The Associated Press reported the next day that a local dentist had taken pity on him and declared, “San Francisco can’t have a rookie of the year going hitless in any league,” and bought a car.

Benjamin Hoffman is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America but per New York Times policy does not participate in the voting on postseason awards.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP11 of the New York edition with the headline: Rookie of the Year Is a Two-Horse Race in the A.L.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe